


Get your breath back

by Aethelar



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: (btw re the underage thing Newt is 16), (just), Incest, M/M, Newt does not worry, Theseus is wound round Newt's little finger, he's also a little bundle of guilt and worry poor thing, it's a character trait
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-26
Updated: 2018-06-26
Packaged: 2019-05-29 03:39:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15064307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aethelar/pseuds/Aethelar
Summary: Theseus and Newt. For this to happen, let’s wind back to the war. Actually no, let’s wind back before then. I’ve not come across any mention of how old Theseus is, but let’s make him… six years older than Newt. And let’s say that young Theseus was earnest and serious and when his father lifted him up under his arms and showed him the tiny bundle in his mother’s arms, six year old Theseus Scamander pledged his life to his younger brother without even realising the importance of what he’d done.





	Get your breath back

Theseus and Newt. For this to happen, let’s wind back to the war. Actually no, let’s wind back before then. I’ve not come across any mention of how old Theseus is, but let’s make him… six years older than Newt. And let’s say that young Theseus was earnest and serious and when his father lifted him up under his arms and showed him the tiny bundle in his mother’s arms, six year old Theseus Scamander pledged his life to his younger brother without even realising the importance of what he’d done.

Newt is a few months old and Theseus is seven, and Theseus has his own child-sized baby sling that he carries Newt around in and gets twitchy if his parents try to commandeer Newt for too long. Newt is two years old and Theseus is eight, and Theseus crawls out of bed in the middle of the night to fetch whatever toy has fallen out of Newt’s cot and hush him back to sleep. Newt is six years old and Theseus is twelve, and when he comes home for the Christmas holidays Newt drags him by the hand to show him the frogspawn he’s found in the local pond, and Theseus ignores the owls from his friends in favour of following after Newt.

Newt is eleven and Theseus is seventeen and they’re at Hogwarts together for just one year, the Gryffindor and his tiny Hufflepuff tag along. Newt doesn’t seem to be making friends in his year and Theseus is pulling back from the ones in his, and at night they sneak out to the lake and watch the giant squid swimming lazy laps until Newt falls asleep on Theseus’ shoulder.

Theseus doesn’t sleep. Theseus stays awake and realises things about himself and understands, or begins to understand, what it means for his younger brother to be the centre of his world. He’s rigid, tense with nerves and guilt and fear, and when Newt slips down from his shoulder to his lap Theseus calls himself eight different kinds of bad person and tries not to breathe.

When Newt wakes up, he doesn’t understand what he’s done, or why his brother is staying so far away. He drifts to Leta instead and stares mournfully across the great hall at his brother in gold and red, and Theseus swallows and looks away.

Newt is thirteen and Theseus is nineteen, and Theseus doesn’t stay long when he visits for Christmas. Newt tries to drag him out to see the latest hippogriff fledgling, but Theseus drops his hand like a hot coal and refuses to look at Newt for long. Newt squints after him and stares down at his hand and hufflepuffs aren’t  _slow_ , no matter what the ravenclaws think, but what they are is stubborn.

Newt is fifteen and expelled and Theseus is twenty one and trying (failing) to date someone else, and Newt turns up on his doorstep with a trunk and a hufflepuff scarf and declares that he’s moving in. Theseus’ girlfriend of the time takes it with good grace for the first week, and Theseus hides behind her like a shield because look - he’s a normal person, he’s in love with someone who isn’t his brother and isn’t six years younger than him and isn’t in the habit of  _wandering the corridors in only a towel while he brushes his teeth_  fuck Newt  _why_.

After a month and half, she puts her foot down. Her or Newt. Theseus can’t have both.

She moves out later that week. Newt packs up the quilts and blankets from the lumpy couch and declares that Theseus’ bed is big enough to share, and no matter how big a wall Theseus builds down the middle of the bed out of pillows and blankets and  _broomsticks and fucking books_  Newt is always curled against his side when he wakes up.

Newt is sixteen, just, and it’s his birthday, his sweet sixteenth, and he corners a flustered Theseus on the rickety chair in the tiny kitchen and determinedly straddles his lap. “You,” he declares, “are an idiot,” and he locks his arms around Theseus’ shoulder and snogs him senseless. It’s a good birthday. It takes Theseus a little while to get his head around the fact that he’s  _allowed_  to touch now instead of pining from a distance and feeling guilty about it, but Newt has sufficient quantities of  _fuck proprietary_ for both of them and he’s got into the habit of sucking Theseus’ brains out of his dick when Theseus starts getting too caught up in things, and basically, it all works.

Newt is seventeen and war has broken out, and Theseus is twenty three and taking a portkey in the morning. “You’ll be fine,” he says as they pack up the flat. Newt spins his wand in a petulant flick and funnels their couch and their photos and their bed and every part of their shared life into Theseus’ battered old case.

“I could put some expansion charms on it,” he says, kicking the case shut. “Build a house. It’s already got all the furniture in it, and then you could take the case and I could come with you and no one would have to know.”

“And what would you do when the expansion charms ran down and you were inside?” Theseus asks, throwing a balled up sock that Newt had missed. Newt catches it and sticks his tongue out.

“I’d make it so they wouldn’t,” he counters as though it were the obvious solution, as though he weren’t trying to violate one of the basic laws of spacial magic - except that Newt had never finished Hogwarts, had he, so he wouldn’t be aware of that.

For a moment, Theseus aches for him - because Newt, his Newt, his little brother and his partner and his lover and his  _everything_ in life is still so young. Maybe it will be better for Newt to find his own place in life when Theseus is gone. Maybe Newt would find the job he wanted, living somewhere outside the grime and the narrow streets of London, loving someone who didn’t have to hide him away and keep their relationship secret. And  _fuck_  doesn’t that thought hurt, to think of Newt with someone else? But Theseus will be gone. Newt shouldn’t wait around for him, for the older brother with the cramped flat and the inability to do the right thing and tell his brother no.

So Theseus fucks him that night, on the carpet of the empty bedroom with only a cushioning charm between them and the floor. He curves his body over Newt’s and tries not to think about how thin Newt is, how small and frail, tries to focus instead on the wet-hot-slide and the desperate-begging- _please_  and he leaves in the morning before Newt wakes up. He keeps the image of Newt throwing his head back as he comes as a secret, a treasure, a talisman against the war, and he tells himself that he’s done the right thing.

Four months into the war Newt tracks him down and knees him in the balls, and while Theseus is curled up and gasping Newt informs him that he’s working with the dragons now and if Theseus tries to leave him behind again the ironbellies will barbeque him. Newt resettles his army-brown jacket over his shoulders and pulls Theseus’ head up to give him a downright filthy kiss that leaves Theseus head spinning, and stalks off with hips sashaying and Theseus’ hat twirling on his finger.

Naturally, Theseus scrambles to his feet and gives chase. Just as soon as he gets his breath back.


End file.
